The GOP – official party of die hard sexist racist gun loving god fearing homophobes, strings pulled by tax free billionaires, plus not so few less than aware so called liberals. A couple rungs away from returning to the patriarchal world of the Game of Thrones.

Don’t look at that evil feminazi video, sexism is totes ancient history – it doesn’t happen anymore, just ask your local MRA dudebros. They are like rats – you are never more than ten paces away from one.

Their testacles won’t let them lie about stuff, afterall, so you can trust them! And they can dig up a couple of women who sort of agree with them, so there is no way they can be anything other than right about all gender relations issues for the rest of time. Any impression that they are a bunch if inadequate, misogynistic men-children is just your pink-fuzzy-lady/feminism-infested-mangina brain misinterpreting what it sees again, which is what happens when you don’t let Real Manly Men(TM) do your thinking for you!!11!!1

That TBBT critique – it supports my theory that the funniest jokes are the ones that are the most human. We laugh, really laugh, when we recognize that someone else understands us and we understand them.

So when Howard on TBBT is shown living with his overbearing mother, the joke is that he’s an awkward loser who has to live with family while an adult – it’s not very funny. But when Annie on Community lives on babysitting savings in a tiny walkup above a sex toy store called Dildopolis because her parents refused to deal openly with her Adderall addiction, the joke is that sometimes life takes us to weird and unexpected places, but we can still be proud of ourselves, like Annie is.

The talking heads in the video certainly portray a depressing image of humanity. Though, I do wonder if the focus on the extreme Fox/Republican nonsense is how the Overton window thing actually works. By focusing on the really extreme crap, the more mundane stuff like the comments about make-up and hair (which were also present in the video) get ignored and eventually normalized. If so, that makes that “…but there’s worse things happening you should be fighting instead” attitude even worse.

I felt a lot of discomfort when trying to watch TBBT, but never could put my finger on what exactly I found wrong with it. I think that article expressed it quite well.

I am going to have to get around to watching Community – I have heard people say that it is essentially a funnier and less borderline discriminatory The Big Bang Theory, but I have never actually watched an episode.

I’ve always been clear I don’t like The Big Bang Theory because I viewed it as nerd drag; using the nerd references as punchlines, not stories; equating nerds and flaming queers as clowns. I know both queer and nerds – and that show conflates them, makes fun of them, and doesn’t explore them.

My mother loves TBBT, and tried to get me to watch it. It always made me uncomfortable because of the stereotyping (I know scientists like Sheldon for instance) and the fact that it makes fun of them. The obvious sexism always stood out too. Not only is the only woman (until the Sheldon clone) the “normal” one, she’s also portrayed as being not very smart. In fact the only women you for much of the show are “normal”, non-geek, non-scientist women. So the making fun of nerds/geeks through the very poor humor of stereotyping, the blatant sexism and homophobia just made it a bad show in my opinion. The blog post you link describes it better than I have when trying to tell people why I don’t like it.

Wow, I feel better knowing it’s not just me who feels belittled by Big Bang Theory. I’d read on TVTropes that apparently at least some nerds think it’s on their side so I was like “?????” at the episodes I watched.

Definitely watch Community. However, I wouldn’t put it in any category with TBBT, and shame on whoever told you they were similar. One deals with stereotyped uber-intelligent nerds and makes heavy use of canned laughter to support predictable jokes, the other is about flawed humans who have ended up in community college and (slowly at first) becomes more surreal than generic sitcom.